The winner of this year’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction says writing is a way of joining a big conversation that has been going on for centuries.

Toronto writer Linda Spalding won this year’s award for her novel The Purchase, which tells the story of an 18th Century Quaker who becomes a slave owner.

Spalding says, even if no one reads what you have written, you still become part of that conversation.

It took Spalding ten years to write The Purchase. She wins $25,000 as the Governor General’s Award winner.